Assimilate All Talents

Chapter 268: Torben

"Yes, that’s it." Sol nodded. "But what we really need is a way for the Frostaxe Clan to continue paying the rent without sacrificing people."

"Sure, I can show you later, but I suggest they leave before Orna sleeps through another crisis." The puppet said with clear snide in its tone. It was still furious about the dragon sleeping through his people’s greatest disaster.

It glanced at the console, which displayed glowing characters and runes on a crystal display. Seeing that it was still processing, the puppet continued its story.

"When my ancestors moved into the mountain, we essentially gave up all of our previous land, the kingdom of Azrem. But King Greyber at the time told my people that Azrem wasn’t a place, but rather the dwarves who built it. So together, they created what you see today, or at least its remains. A few centuries later, I was born. My name..." The puppet paused, struggling to remember the name it hadn’t used in a long time. "My name is Torben Badgerun, son of Rainer Badgerun."

"Torben, how did you become... this?"

Sol had already guessed the puppet was one of the Azrem Dwarves, but how Torben had ended up as a puppet was still a mystery to him.

Torben raised his arms and looked at them in deep reflection. "I have a special constitution, or should I say, ability? I can see souls and manipulate them to a certain degree. I only found out later that it wasn’t normal to be able to do that since my parents tried to keep it hidden. They feared I’d be taken advantage of if others found out, but eventually, the secret slipped, and nothing of the sort happened. Instead, I was given the best resources and training to learn and master the way of the soul smith."

"Is that how those puppets and the Chosen Slayer were made?"

"Pfft! Haha! Gods, no!" The puppet shook with laughter. "Those could be made by any rune smith worth their salt. Soul smithing is the art of imbuing one’s creations with souls, be it artificial, a fragment, or even a full soul. Lets use the puppets you’ve seen as an example. If a rune smith makes puppets, they are created to follow preset instructions and commands. When dealing with unknown variables or situations, they’d likely fail. The closest you can get to sentience with rune smithing is artificial intelligence, like the one the Chosen Slayer has. It works by processing vast amounts of data to figure out how to act in most situations, but its not perfect.

Torben nodded.

"My people thought we were safe from war, but how could we stay uninvolved when the war involved the fate of the world? As the home of the best craftsmen in the world, we helped the other countries by supplying them with weapons and tools for war. We gave them the means to fight back against their enemies’ superior weaponry and even the odds."

Sol could see where this was going. "So the outer gods targeted you?"

"Yes, but at the time, we believed we were untouchable. Let me ask you, do you think all gods are equal?"

Sol thought for a moment, then answered, "They’re not, right?"

"No. And even though Orna was wounded, no other god dared to antagonize him. Any god who entered his domain without permission was killed on the spot. I can remember at least twenty gods, both outer and our own, who died that way. So it wasn’t hard to believe that as long as Orna was here to protect us, we could act boldly."

"And then Orna went to sleep..."

Torben nodded. "At the time, we found it odd that he wasn’t accepting life clusters like usual. We tried to wake him, but nothing we did worked. We thought he had entered some kind of hibernation period and left it at that. But when the Outer Gods sent... that thing here, everything went to shit."

"What thing? And who sent it? Was it the God of Thunder you mentioned?"

Torben’s mechanical hand clenched, slowly creaking and bending in clear anger. "No, much worse. It was the God of Bliss."